Just broke a Wingnut on a rock. Don’t want to spend another $40-49 just so the same thing can happen. Any cheap fins out there? 8"-10"? Flex? Everything I see is around $50. Nothing in the $20 range? What do you guys do, get 'em wholesale???
BB
Check out this site… http://www.fiberglasssupply.com/Product_Catalog/SurfSailcom/surfsailcom.html
Not $20, but a good bit cheaper!
I make my own. for a few bucks each.
$40-45 is not at all unreasonable for a glass single fin. That is roughly the retail price you should expect when dealing with any of the three larger US-owned glass fin makers (Rainbow, FU, or Ames).
Fiberglasssupply.com has some cheaper ones.
I’d love to make my own FU fins. How do I do it??
BB
EEEEEEBBBBAAAAAAYYY,archive check the construction instructions …spend money get somthing good and give wingnut $2.50 to spend on kids clothes… ambrose …no man is an Island with unsurfed reefs nd glistening beaches in the sun with nobody out … even an island eventually gets lonely,if you didn’t drag bottom with your fin you wouldnt have to get another
$45 - $50 if fine for a handmade fin. If your too broke to afford $49.00 You should not be worrying about which fin to buy. You can get a cheap popout fin for around $15.00 to $20.00 and they will work just the same for the average surfer. You would be paying much more for any other handmade item out of the surf industry.
The archives are full of info on how to make your own fin. I’d recommend reading there.
Basically, you first cut 6 oz cloth into equal sized sheets.
Mix a slow setting batch of lam resin. Get a big plate of glass, preferably no cracks.
Take 5 layers at a time, wet them, lay them down, squeegee them free of air bubbles. Go to 32 layers. Let it dry. Carefully remove the fiberglass plate from the glass.
Cut the template, including the fin tab, out of the sheet. Put the fin tab in a bench vise. Use a hand-held belt sander, and foil it roughly. Finish the foiling by hand. Sometimes a very thin layer of sanding resin may be applied at the end to get a nice finish. After a few you should be able to foil a fin, start to finish, in 30 minutes.
And beware, the sanding process creates a LOT, and I mean a LOT, of dust. Think carefully about where you are going to do this. The garage or living room is not a good choice (the garage could be if you put a plastic shield around the room and run a vacuum cleaner next to the sander to take as much of the dust out as quickly as possible.
You then need to finish the fin tab and put the cross bolt in, a jigsaw and drill press will be handy.
If you repeat this often, as I have recently, you can learn about a lot of different designs that mostly don’t work as well as the more standard designs, and maybe if you make enough you will start to make a few that work as well or better for you than standard designs.
I believe the pros, FU and Rainbow and Ames, foil with high pressure water.
Rainbow Distributing in Florida, an affiliate of Rainbow Fin Co. in La Selva, offers a black polycarbonate 9" single fin for Bahne box, at $19.95 retail. They ship, of course. Works OK in small waves…don’t ride it overhead.
That Blakstah, quite the engineer!
Did you know windsurfing fins, poly glass, retail around $70?
And I have more than 10, G-10 or hybrids of carbon, that retail at over $200 each!
Current state of the art Carbon over foam fins retail at $275 and take a 4 month delivery time!
Lucky you are a surfer, not a windsurfer!